Friday, May 20, 2011

If you're sick to death of desk jobs, consider a career in the circus as part of a flying trapeze act!

The money is good - and more so the rousing applause. And as the job requires you to be perfectly fit at all times, you save on paying for a gym. Workout for free while working for top wages. Accommodation, food and transport provided. What better way to see the world?

Sunday, May 15, 2011

You might just stumble across a procession of Oodlies on their way to an art gallery in Melbourne for Joi Murugavell's solo opening on 14 June 2011...

Is this Joi Murugavell? Nope... it's just another one of her infamous Oodlies...Is this Joi Murugavell? Hmmm... it could be... with a bit too much make-up...

Blame it on Facebook. I randomly clicked on a comment Joi Murugavell left on her brother Vijay Kumar's status - and it led me to her website... where I got zapped with a colorful explosion of sheer creative genius and unmitigated zaniness - and it got my mojo all fired up.

Not since I bumped into Nina Paley at a cartoonists conference back in 1989 have I encountered such a succulent energy field, emanating from such smoochable brainlobes. Who is this entity named Joi Murugavell, I wondered... so I sent her a short message... and after a couple of exchanges, I learnt that Joi was born in Malaysia and, in her early teens, she opted to study in New Zealand, then moved to Australia... and never came back, except on vacation.

She knew of me in one of my earlier incarnations as a cartoonist named Kit Leee and asked if I would agree to be interviewed for Oodlies.com. How could I say no to such a vibrant and vivacious young lady? She requested that I scan some of my doodles and send them to her, so she could arrange some sort of blind date with her Oodlies.

Well, my random doodles (first published 1994 in Moth Balls, a collection of my "scatological and eschatological" poems) had been gathering dust in my rusty filing cabinet for decades... they literally hadn't seen the light of day since Joi Murugavell was in kindergarten. I imagine as a kid she must have looked just like an Oodlie...

So I spent an entire afternoon scanning a pile of spontaneous sketches (mostly done while chatting on the phone) and rescuing them from analog oblivion. I have absolutely no idea what Joi is going to do with them (for all I know she may be a sadist or an even worse pervert than I am), but nothing terrible can possibly happen in the Cartoon Universe, so why worry about it?

Anyway, the Cartoon Universe is where I'd like to migrate if those destructive dickheads with heavy investments in the so-called "defence industries" decide to blow up planet Earth.

Meanwhile, before Joi Murugavell gets to work digitally mutating my random doodles (or Oodleees, since I went by the name "Leee" in my cartooning days), I'd like to share a small selection with you...